The Challenge

In a media soaked world, Texture could easily become another fire hose of content that overwhelms its users with too much choice. My goal was to get users to the stories they’re most likely to read as quickly as possible, while still presenting the opportunity to discover new brands and experiences.

Research

Finding Our Audience

Texture was co-owned by the largest magazine publishers in the world, so I was able to access their demographic data to begin narrowing down the most likely users of our service given our specific range of titles.

Reading Habits

We used moderated, in-house user research sessions to analyze people’s physical and digital magazine reading habits using participants recruited from Nichols Research. Participants were asked to bring the magazines they had most recently read, and their primary devices for reading digital magazines.

Building a Persona

Using the data shown above, we were able to construct our primary persona Megan.

Areas of Opportunity

Using our research findings combined with an analysis of competing services, we identified areas of opportunity for Texture to stand out.

Design

Library Architecture

I spent a lot of time exploring how content should be compartmentalized in the app. Techniques included card sorting exercises with remote participants using UserTesting.com, in person user testing sessions with low fidelity prototypes made with Principle, and of course lots of sketching. In the end we settled on three main buckets: 1) anything the user has taken some sort of action on to show their interest, 2) everything else in the catalog, and 3) disaggregated content curated by our editors for when users want a bite-sized reading experience.

Process Shots, Click to Enlarge

Prototyping and User Testing

Prototypes involved different tools depending on what phase of production we were in at any given time. 

I used Principle to build out low fidelity, interactive versions of the Library I.A. and reading experience to use in early stage testing.

When higher fidelity mockups were needed, I built out single screen prototypes using Xcode and Swift. 

Converting to Paid

Texture has always positioned itself as a premium, subscription based service. At first our Executive team was hesitant to expose any of our library to non-subscribed users, but using Optimizely for A/B testing proved our hypothesis that increasing access boosted conversion. I relied on Apple’s built in Subscription Management API to make the sign up process as easy as possible. One area I think we could have improved on is removing the requirement for users to create a Texture account to subscribe, but foundational decisions made early on rendered that impossible from a technical standpoint.

Results

As print media declines, Texture has been hailed as the future of the magazine publishing industry. The value to the user is undeniable, as is the concentration of content from trusted journalistic sources. I’ve worked hard to make that content accessible and desirable. Our users love Texture, and it’s hard to argue with these results: